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Monday, June 8, 2009

Monday, June 8, 2009

If you're still planning a party for the graduate in your life, then these bakeries would like you to know that they are ready and willing to provide a whole host of graduation-appropriate cake designs...

On Styrofoam.

Sure, it tends to stick in the molars a bit, but it's extremely low in fat.

NOTE TO BAKERS: Icing tends to slide off of Styrofoam when displayed at an angle.

NOTE TO CUSTOMERS: Regard all cakes stored flat with extreme suspicion from now on.

If for some reason you feel compelled to have a photo of your grad on the cake, then this bakery obliges with either a traditional, "boring," photo, or the hip new "green-out silhouette" option:

Also great for grads in the Witness Protection Program!

And for those customers who may become confused, thinking they have to purchase a cake with someone else's photo on it, this bakery provides a helpful clarification:

Congrats! You spelled "your" wrong!

But suppose your grad is spiritually inclined? How do you tastefully incorporate his or her religious views into a graduation cake? Well, this bakery shows us how...

...not to do it.

And lastly, this bakery wants you to send your graduate a really heartfelt message.

Oh Oh Oh! These had me rolling on the floor laughing! I'm right in the middle of a stressful move and took a break to see if today's wrecks had been posted. So glad I did. I'll be laughing about the butt cake for the rest of the day!

LOL! I just had a niece graduate and i am so glad none of these made it to the party... what were these people thinking anyway? how can you possibly look at any of these and say- "wow, this looks AWESOME."?

WV: ingessemeaning: I'm glad i dont have to "ingesse" any of these wrecks.

Now I know two good reasons why using styrofoam for art projects is bad: #1 it melts in the presence of high volumes of water and #2 icing slides off of it.

The butt cookie cake is hilarious!

Now, before anyone goes accusing Jen of hypocrisy over using the wrong "it's," let me just say that I never had any trouble with your/you're, its/it's, there/their/they're, etc., until I taught high school and constantly faced the incorrect usage, despite all of my efforts to combat it. Sadly, I still have to think about which one is correct. To make a long story short, it's the wreckerators' fault for Jen losing her grip on grammar! ;)

I have pointed out punctuation errors to the bakers where I work, the common one is the wrong use of their/there/they're or your/you're. When I read it like it says "You are picture here" then the bakers understand the mistake and fix it.

As for "it's", I believe the apostrophe was correct. Apostrophes are used for contractions and to show posession..."Jen's blog", so in this case, it would be "it's robot arms"

OK, grammar police, go back to bed, please. Grammar mistakes on CAKES are funny and noteworthy. Picking at the punctuation in a blog, not so much.

I LOVE the butt face one. hee hee.

Got a question here, what, oh WHAT is the giant purple paisley-ish blob at the foot of the cross on the Catolic grad cake? All I could figure was maybe it's Jonah (fresh out of the belly and onto the back of the whale) arriving at the cross surfer style?

I appreciate all of you who pointed out Jen's misuse of the word "it's." Very kind. This is one of those things that really makes no sense though. Observe:

John's going to the store.It was John's idea.It's taking quite a while.The cat played with its toy.

Why does an s that denotes a possessive not have an apostrophe after it? I looked to my wise English professor Mom for and answer, hopefully one based in ancient Saxon verbage or...something. Her answer:"English is stupid. Be glad you were born with it."

Which is why I'm starting a petition to change the possessive of it to it's. Who's with me?!?!

I wish people would learn to spell "your" and "you're" correctly. It would eliminate so much pain and suffering. On the other hand, it might also substantially cut down the number of cakes you can make fun of. So what if I ended that sentence with a proposition?

There is no apostrophe in the possessive "its" for the same reason there is no apostrophe in other pronomitive possessives (yours, his, hers, mine, my, ours, theirs, whose): the word itself is already possessive.

This is in contrast to nominative possessives (Jen's blog, Cake Wrecks' bandwidth, Haiku Joy's bad haircut)in which the apostrophe and "s" change the noun (Jen) into a possessive adjective (Jen's).

So, if you start with a pronoun and use it to show possession, no apostrophe. Start with a noun, and you need it.

Kinda unrelated, but I have noticed some posters using "nutsack" alot lately. That has got to be one of the most hilarious words. EVER! Tee hee... I'm going to call my hubby a nutsack when he gets home. I'm sure he will be flattered! :) (Seriously, he will!)

I can't believe all of the people that are pointing out that she misspelled 'its'. There is a huge difference in not paying a ton of attention when writing an entertainment blog and not paying attention when decorating someone's cake. I'm pretty sure Jen wouldn't misspell something on a cake.

As for the apostrophe issue, maybe I can help clear up beyond just "English is stupid."

"It" is a pronoun. You also don't use an apostrophe to denote possession with other pronominal forms, as with ours, hers, his, theirs. Apostrophes are used with nouns and/or as contractions, as in "the cat's got milk" or "Jane's going to the shop." All very simple, really.

In a world dominated by lolcats and txt msgs, I am surprised that anyone knows how to spell, use proper grammar or even just ennunciate their words properly anymore. I sure don't. Oh yes, and the butt cake has given me a days worth of smiles :)

WV: masiver-what the vetran CCC decorater said to the rookie CCC decorater, "No, no, no! Use more icing, it needs to be masiver!"

I just love the butt-face cake. Creative ways to use a heart-shaped pan. Why let the pan just sit on a shelf and pull it out just once a year? Good thinking there ... (um ... not.)

The one with all of the holy flotsam looks like a "this is your life" for the Catholic set. Several sacraments (Confirmation, First Communion) are covered; plus the general crucifix and praying hands. They just threw in the Graduation flotsam as an afterthought. Maybe this person only got one cake and all the bases had to be covered!

Oh too many funnies today! I'm lovin' it... First a purple blob (Jonah?), then a butt-cookie/nutsack "cake," and then Jon cracking me up after all the hoopla about a silly Monday-morning whoopsie. As always, Jen, thank you from the bottom of my upside-down heart!

definately looks more like lustrous pubes than any kind of hat. on the brackets and full stop thing, i think that is a variable rule and in the uk the full stop goes inside the brackets and in america it goes outside. or the other way round perhaps... but either way which one is right depends on where you are.

The green photos raise so many interesting thoughts, irradiation, off planet graduates....wow exotic bakery there. Love the bottom cheeks, what were they thinking, especially later when they put it on display and stood back...hmm now what does that remind me of?

I stared at that first picture forever... I couldn't figure out why they looked so funny! I just thought they were really badly piped... Why the heck would you put them on styrofoam and then prop them up at an angle - and then not take them down when the piping and icing started sliding?!?!

WV - twebobs --- I can't think of a funny way to use it, it's just a good word!

Thank you, Cake Wrecks and comments writers, for the uproarious laughter you induce! And thank you. Lily and Karin, for asking and answering my "huh?" at what looked to me like more dead fish filets on cake... I love you all!

I was looked at the first photo (sliding frosting) without reading first and was all, "What is going on here?" I didn't realize the frosting had slid, I thought the cakes were just oddly (creatively?)decorated.

I missed a wrecky photo-op yesterday as my phoen with camera was dead. But the CostCo near me had a slew of the same "congratulations grads" (although all spelled properly) cakes in different colors representing the local High Schools and a key taped to the cooler to show which schools were which colors. Great asset for the parent who has missed their child's school colors for four years. But the real wreck was that amidst this sea of sloppily-piped caps and tassels there was one half sheet that simply said "Happy Cake" on it. I am tempted to go back and see if it's still there. At least the cake is happy.

I confess it's one that I frequently mess up. And I am pretty sure the confusion comes from how we are taught to punctuate possessives. When it comes to a pronouns, nouns, or proper names, there is an apostrophe. For instance: "The table's leg is broken." Okay. Well, we aren't saying "The table is leg broken.", so why the apostrophe there but not here: "I just purchased this table. Its leg is broken."

The apostrophe should be used consistently or not at all, in my opinion. And yes I know you that correctness dictates one can't have an "opinion", but language and punctuation does evolve over time, so nyah. Anyway, the rule to leave out the apostrophe because she's not saying "your cap is ridiculous, with it is teensy little robot arm." makes sense - but so then why then doesn't: "It would be Robert's last attempt." mean "It would be Robert is last attempt."?

Anyway. blahblahblah I'm pretty sure there are at least 5 unnecessary punctuation marks in my post. Have at it grammar/punctuation patrol.

The green photos on the 2nd batch of cakes didn't start out that way. They likely had regular full-color pictures and then were subjected to bright lights.

I can't speak to florescents, but a high-school friend had a very nice sheet cake (with plastic hat dohickey in a corner) with her photo printed on it. Grad party was outside. Her (photo) face was green within 10 minutes.

Years ago my friends had my husband and I over for dinner to celebrate my husband's birthday. She knew he liked carrot cake, so she picked one up at the grocery store. When we went to cut into we realized they sold us their cardboard model cake! We've laughed about that for years!

Okay, seriously, the cookie shops really need to stop it with the decorations!! At most add the "congratulations" or whatever the saying needs to be...but leave the decorating alone...let it be what it is...a giant cookie note card...

I recognise those cakes. Not THOSE cakes specifically, but those designs (and the cheesy plastic) are the ones my bakery made/recieved in shipment LAST MONTH.

We did, I should note, store them flat. On a display table, way out in the middle of the floor, for two weeks (the other two weeks they were hidden in the freezer. I had to walk/work around them. They had a big sign on the rack saying "FOR DISPLAY ONLY". No *bleep*, SHerlock). We also had the same picture on the yellow photo cake, with the same problems from using a poorly calibrated food-ink printer. I recognise it because I kept wanting to print it back out after fixing "our" printer (and later discovered that OUR printer had different calibration issues than the one that printed that photo.)

Wow, thanks for the shout out to Bake! Decorate! Celebrate!, that's my favorite show. It's such a trainwreck! Sadly our local station no longer shows it, but my boyfriend was sweet enough to buy the DVD's.

bryn said on the brackets and full stop thing, i think that is a variable rule and in the uk the full stop goes inside the brackets and in america it goes outside. or the other way round perhaps... but either way which one is right depends on where you are.

Actually, that has to do with whether the punctuation is part of the parenthetical text or not.

Sometimes, the punctuation belongs to the sentence as a whole (as in this case).

Sometimes, the parenthetical text has its own punctuation. (See what I did there?)

Basically, if the text in the parentheses can stand on its own as a complete sentence, the punctuation goes inside the parentheses with it, and the parenthetical text is capitalized in sentence case.

Hahah this is hysterical.. Robot arm :). I actually baked my graduation cake, it was a red velvet cake that I found on this website http://www.howcast.com/videos/139827-How-To-Make-Red-Velvet-Cake. Was absolutely yummy and I didn't dare to write anything on it.

its amazing how something as simple and juvenile as "your face looks like a butt" can make me laugh loudly at work, causing all my coworkers to stare at me in confusion and demand to know why I was laughing while they were telling stories of woe and back pain.

Ooooooohhhh dear. I think this says far, far more about my state of mind than the actual cake... >< But I wasn't thinking of a bum (Butt to you Americans :P ) when I saw that last cake.. No.. It looks far more like a part of the male anatomy to me.

There was indeed an apostrophe error in her original post, although it has (aka "it's") been fixed now. Perhaps you could use your own advice before you jump on people who are just trying to defend the much-maligned apostrophe. :)

I fixed the whoopsy pretty quickly but since Jen is adverse to me deleting comments, I left up the ones pointing it out. I think in the future, I'll just take them down to avoid confusion. Thanks for being so attentive.

OMG, it took me forever to work out what that last one was. "Is it an upside down heart?" "A butt?" "A really weird coconut drink with a straw?" Finally, that moment of clarity, "Ohhhhhh! It's a graduation hat on a...um...yeah."

Sam's Club here in Albuquerque had a display for the graduation cakes and everyone was the same color! Now that I know there is a web site dedicated to cake disasters I will be taking lots of pictures!!!

I work at a bakery and have for about 13 years (not at the same one). The faded photo was, the light fads the rice paper. The sliding cake fiasco was NOT the decorators falt. That was sent down from headquarters. No joke the " managers" at some stores where told and did not care.

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